Glossary

Denial of Service

A Denial of Service (DOS) attack is a technique used by attackers to prevent legitimate users from accessing a website, application, data, or other services. This is commonly achieved by making multiple “false” requests to a web server or application. The number of these requests overloads the capacity of the targeted system, meaning it has no resources to serve legitimate users.

DOS attacks are often perpetrated using “botnets” — a collection of computers that have been infected with malware, like a Trojan Horse, allowing an attacker to remotely control them and to send spurious traffic to the service they are attacking.

DOS attacks can result in slow, inefficient or non-responsive services, interruption of network traffic, interference with legitimate connections, and more. For organizations that rely on their website or web applications, defending against DOS attacks should be a high priority.